It was a late summer morning when Robert “Fat Daddy” Taylor woke up, smoked two blunts, and decided to turn himself in. He’d been on the run for four days, and it seemed that everywhere he went in and around the 7 Mile neighborhood on the east side of Detroit, there were photos of him in stores, and people quick to call the police, to claim the $1,000 reward for finding him.
“The streets talk,” Taylor told me recently. “Everybody was telling me, ‘Yo, Fats, man, those boys trying to get you.’ I couldn’t go nowhere. [The police] was everywhere.”
Taylor was not afraid — after all, he was only a person of interest, not a suspect, in a murder that had taken place 15 days earlier, and he knew he had not committed the crime. Still, he was only 16, so he decided to seek the counsel of John McCoy, a 40-something-year-old neighborhood friend. McCoy assured Taylor that the police could not charge him, so Taylor continued walking along East Jefferson Avenue and made his way to the Beaubien police station. He was too young to conceive that this would essentially be his last day of freedom, that this simple act would lead to an arrest, then a life without parole sentence for a crime he insists he did not commit.
“I was 16 years old. I was still a young boy, still a puppy in the hood running reckless,” said Taylor, who is currently incarcerated at the Chippewa Correctional Facility in Kincheloe, Michigan, about 30 miles south of the Canadian border. “But [white people] see a person from the gutter, the ghetto, coming over there and killing one of theirs. There was no way they was ever going to let me go home.”
Taylor’s was a high-profile case. Prosecutors argued that on August 9, 2009, he and his co-defendant, Ihab Masalmani, who was then 17, robbed 21-year-old Matthew Landry after abducting him from an Eastpointe, Michigan, Quiznos restaurant. Masalmani then killed Landry in a burnt-out building in Detroit while, prosecutors said, Taylor stood by. In November 2010 and February 2011, Masalmani and Taylor were first sentenced to mandatory life without parole, a sentence that at the time was legal for minors.
Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
In June 2012, the Supreme Court decided Miller v. Alabama and banned the use of mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles; in January 2016, the Court decided in Montgomery v. Louisiana that the Miller ruling is retroactive, so even those who were sentenced as minors before 2012 are eligible for resentencing. Under Miller, judges can still sentence minors to life without parole as long as mitigating factors — the child’s age, home environment, extent of participation in the crime, and potential for rehabilitation — are considered. In the Miller ruling, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that given “children’s diminished culpability and heightened capacity for change,” life without parole sentences for minors should be “uncommon.” The Miller majority further states:
Although we do not foreclose a sentencer’s ability to make that judgment [life without parole] in homicide cases, we require it to take into account how children are different, and how those differences counsel against irrevocably sentencing them to a lifetime in prison … just as the chronological age of a minor is itself a relevant mitigating factor of great weight, so must the background and mental and emotional development of a youthful defendant be duly considered in assessing his culpability.
But in some states, judges are still giving juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) sentences on a fairly frequent basis. According to data collected by Phillips Black, a nonprofit law firm, 84 percent of all JLWOP sentences given between June 2012 and May 2015 were given in just four states: Louisiana, California, Florida, and Michigan. While Florida and California had the highest numbers — 28 and 26 JLWOP sentences respectively — Louisiana (21) and Michigan (17) had the highest numbers per capita. In these four states, some judges are using the very mitigating factors that are meant to be an argument against a life sentence as evidence that these juveniles cannot be rehabilitated, and should spend the rest of their lives in prison.
That’s exactly what happened to Taylor and Masalmani. In the fall of 2014, Judge Diane Druzinski of the Macomb County Circuit Court heard the mitigating factors in Taylor’s and Masalmani’s cases. Both were again sentenced to life without parole in January 2015.
The United States is the only country in the world that routinely sentences children to life in prison without parole, and, according to estimates from nonprofits and advocacy groups, there are between 2,300 and 2,500 people serving life without parole for crimes committed when they were minors. Two-thirds of those were sentenced in just five states: Louisiana, California, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Ninety-seven percent of them are male, according to figures from the Sentencing Project, and 60 percent are black.
There are between 2,300 and 2,500 people serving life without parole for crimes committed when they were minors.
Although these young people have been charged and convicted of heinous crimes, advocates argue that they should not be sentenced to life in prison, because they can be rehabilitated and should not pay such a stiff penalty for crimes committed when they weren’t mature enough to truly understand the ramifications.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, teenagers and young adults often act impulsively, without much consideration for consequences, because in teens “the parts of the brain involved in emotional responses are fully online, or even more active than in adults, while the parts of the brain involved in keeping emotional, impulsive responses in check are still reaching maturity.” The frontal cortex, the area of the brain that controls reasoning and decision-making, does not reach full development until around age 25, which is in part why the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Bar Association, and other organizations have issued statements opposing JLWOP sentences, because they do not believe children should be held morally culpable in the same way adults are.
This does not mean, however, that minors should not take responsibility and face consequences for their actions. “This is about review, this isn’t guaranteeing that people will be released,” said Jody Kent Lavy, director of the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth. “We’re advocating for periodic reviews to see whether they’ve changed and are prepared to be resentenced or come before a parole board and be released. We know that the vast majority of these young people age out of criminal behavior once they’ve matured and the brain stops developing at around age 25 and believe it is an appropriate time to check in on them and determine whether they can be released and returned to their communities as productive members of society.”
The other issue that plays a part in almost all JLWOP cases is childhood trauma. According to the Sentencing Project, 79 percent of minors sentenced to life without parole witnessed violence in their homes, and almost 50 percent experienced physical abuse. Eighteen percent were not living with a close adult relative at the time they were incarcerated, and were homeless, or living with friends or in group homes.
Photo: Morry Gash/AP
The details of Taylor’s childhood came out in court during his mitigation hearing. Taylor grew up primarily in 7 Mile, a neighborhood of stark contrasts: Nicely kept homes with baskets of pink flowers and wind chimes and American flags on front porches sit opposite defeated houses with shattered windows, vines enveloping their facades, and trees growing through them. It’s a neighborhood where gunshots, drugs, and death were a regular part of life.
Though Detroit police statistics show that the homicide rate has fallen from a high of 55 homicides per 100,000 residents in 2012 to 43 per 100,000 residents last year, Detroit as a whole is consistently ranked one of the most violent cities in the country.
During an interview at the prison, Taylor told me that he got his first gun, a 38-caliber revolver, when he was 12, and was shot in the back when he was 14.
We were seated at the back of the visiting room, farthest from the wall of windows that let in a stream of light from the late-afternoon sun. Taylor pulled up the sleeve of his blue and white button-down shirt to reveal a tattoo of the grim reaper on his left arm, which he got because, he said: “I felt like he was always hanging out over my neighborhood.”
Taylor’s father has been in prison for most of his life. His mother had her first child at 13 and raised Taylor and his five siblings primarily alone. Court documents state that Taylor grew up in an “unstable and unsafe” environment:
Wayne County neglect records reflected Robert’s mother had a long history of instability, that she often left the children without food and proper supervision. … There were previous complaints alleging physical neglect and physical abuse. Robert’s older brother, Demetrius Taylor … reported his mother was beaten by her boyfriends in front of the children and that on one occasion she was beaten with a pistol, her neck was broken and that her boyfriend attempted to set fire to the house when she and the children were at home.
“It was traumatizing, and it was scary,” Taylor said of his home environment. He was speaking in a low voice — he said he’s always been soft spoken, but was trying his best to ensure that the corrections officer at the other end of the visiting room wouldn’t hear. He said he didn’t want people to think ill of his mother. “There was no love there. I didn’t never feel like it was my home, even though I was living there.”
Taylor said that when he was 11, his mother pointed a gun at his head as a joke during an argument over a pair of sneakers. He left home and lived on his own, bouncing from one friend’s house to another.
Robert Taylor
Photo: Michigan DOC
“This is what led me [to prison],” said Taylor. “This is what led to me hanging around people who I shouldn’t never have been around. I’m 12, 13 years old, and they thinking I’m like 20 because I’m out all night. This is what led me here — not having a stable condition at my house.”
Taylor’s mother, Rhonda, said that she has never owned a gun and would certainly never have pointed one at her son’s head. She said that while she struggled to raise her children pretty much on her own, working multiple jobs and having to move houses several times, she provided a stable environment for them. The children did sometimes stay at friends’ homes, but, she said, it was only for short periods of time.
“At some point, boys act out. So, when they get into it with they parents they want to storm out,” Rhonda said. “If I feel one of my kids disrespecting me, you got to leave. You got to do something with yourself because I’m not about to sit here and accept that from any of my kids in terms of disrespecting me.”
When Taylor was 12, he was charged with larceny for stealing a phone. He claims he didn’t steal the phone, but took the rap for a 17-year-old friend who had told him that since he was 12, he would only serve two or three months in a juvenile facility. Instead, he spent just over a year at various juvenile detention facilities. He was allowed to go home for periodic visits, but said his mother would pick him up, drop him off at home, and leave.
After Taylor was released, he continued to essentially live on his own. He said that while it was fairly easy to find places to sleep at night, it was still hard for him to fend for himself at such a young age. “It was actually kind of scary, man, not knowing when the next time you going to go eat or whatever, but I made a way.”
Though Taylor’s attorney, Jonathan Simon, used the unfortunate facts of Taylor’s life to ask the court for leniency, as stipulated in Miller, Judge Druzinski suggested they were proof that Taylor was unlikely to change. “The difficulty of defendant’s upbringing is the only factor which could be said to weigh in favor of an indeterminate sentence,” she ruled, “but this factor also suggests that defendant’s prospects for rehabilitation are minimal.”
The prosecutor, William Cataldo, implied during the mitigation hearing that Taylor needed to be in prison, where his life would have some order, as opposed to on the streets, where it had been so chaotic. When an expert witness, a counselor named Kathleen Schaefer, said that Taylor had matured, and that she could see that change from his level of introspection, Cataldo replied: “And this interview is taking place when he is in a structured environment, being told where to be, what to do, when to eat, and how to behave. That’s what prison is, isn’t it? … You haven’t met him when he’s out on the street having to live on his own and making his own way.”
14711 Maddelein St., August 2009.
Photo: Google Maps
The other issue in Taylor’s case as it pertains to the mitigating factors outlined in the Miller ruling was his level of involvement in the crime. Masalmani was the primary suspect, but prosecutors said that Taylor had been a lookout when Landry was abducted, and was with Masalmani from the time they left the Quiznos until the murder at 14711 Maddelein St. Taylor maintains that although he was present when Landry was kidnapped, he had no idea that Masalmani was going to rob and then shoot Landry, and was not in the house when Landry was killed.
It was sweltering that August afternoon — at 94 degrees, it was the hottest day that year — and Taylor and Masalmani rode their bikes to a nearby pool to swim. They didn’t have the money to pay the entrance fee and went to Quiznos at around 2:30 p.m. to get some water.
As they exited the Quiznos, according to Taylor, Masalmani told him to tackle Landry so that they could get his keys and steal his car. Taylor says he was more focused on fixing the chain on his bike, which had slipped, so when Landry came out, it was Masalmani who wrestled with Landry and forced him into the green Honda Accord.
“[Masalmani] got to doing his thing with the victim, but I did not put my hands on this guy, I did not carjack this guy, I did not take him from point A to point B,” said Taylor. “But I was dumb as hell; I jumped in the vehicle and we went back to the city.”
An eyewitness confirmed that it was Masalmani, not Taylor, who attacked Landry, but said that Taylor appeared to be the lookout. During the trial, a detective testified that on the day that Taylor turned himself in, he admitted that he had been the lookout; Taylor denies having done so.
Ihab Masalmani
Photo: Michigan DOC
Taylor said that it was not unusual to see Landry, a middle-class white man, being driven around the predominantly poor and African-American east side of Detroit by two young men of color. (Taylor is African-American and Masalmani is originally from the Middle East.) “Dope fiends come through that neck of the woods all the time and give little homeboys they cars to drive while they be smoking,” said Taylor. “So that’s not nothing un-normal that they ain’t never saw before. It was no reason for people to be like, ‘What’s going on?’”
The story of what happened once Landry, Masalmani, and Taylor got to 7 Mile varies. During the trial, Michael Sadur, who was incarcerated with Taylor in the maximum security unit at the Macomb County jail, testified that Taylor had confessed to him: “He said after they put [Landry] in the car, Ihab pulled out … a 40 caliber. And he drove away, heading to Detroit. … Mr. Landry was, he was like nausea, sick, smoking back to back, because he knew what time it was. They told him what time it was.” Sadur said Taylor told him that they had driven Landry directly to the abandoned house, where Masalmani then shot him. “[Taylor] said Ihab really didn’t care. He just turned around like nothing happened, and walk away. And told Taylor: ‘Come on. Let’s go spend some money or something.’”
Fredrick Singletone, an admitted crack addict, testified that he saw Taylor, Masalmani, and Landry at around 10 p.m. in a drug den at the corner of Maddelein and Monarch, where he was smoking crack. He said that Masalmani gave him money to purchase more crack, and that Taylor and Landry sat quietly on the sofa while everyone else got high.
Taylor and Masalmani maintain that they were never in that house, which is just steps away from the property where Landry’s body was found, and Taylor believes both Sadur and Singletone, who was also incarcerated at the time he testified, were coerced by law enforcement officials to make up their accounts, in return for reduced sentences. Sadur and Singletone, in their trial testimony, both denied they had made such a deal.
Taylor told me that he, Masalmani, and Landry drove the 3 miles directly from Eastpointe to 7 Mile, and when they got to Maddelein Street, Masalmani parked the car, and the three got out. Taylor was more at ease now that he was back in his neighborhood, and he talked with friends while Masalmani and Landry walked into 14711 Maddelein St. Taylor said he wasn’t keeping track of time, but Masalmani returned some time later, alone.
Hillary Clinton in 1996 during a speech in support of the 1994 Violent Crime Control Act.
Image: C-Span
Until the late 19th century, the U.S. did not have an established juvenile justice system, and courts essentially treated children as adults. Then, the “child saver” movement advocated for a new system of criminal justice for children that would evaluate each individual child, and rehabilitate him in a home-like environment rather than simply punishing him. Robin Walker Sterling, a professor at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law, argues that this new system was designed for white children. Black children continued to be lynched and otherwise punished more harshly then their white counterparts. “In other words,” she writes in a paper, “black children were black before they were children, and were therefore exempt from the presumption that they were amenable to rehabilitation.”
In the 1990s, the notion of the “superpredator” — mainly black youth who were portrayed by the media and politicians as running wild, terrorizing law-abiding citizens — led to states moving minors into adult courts and giving them harsher sentences, including life without parole. Princeton political scientist John J. DiIulio warned that these superpredators were: “born of abject ‘moral poverty’ … it is the poverty of growing up surrounded by deviant, delinquent, and criminal adults in chaotic, dysfunctional, fatherless, Godless, and jobless settings where drug abuse and child abuse are twins, and self-respecting young men literally aspire to get away with murder.”
The fear was that without drastic methods, the number of violent crimes by minors would continue to rise. In 1996, first lady Hillary Clinton gave a speech in support of the 1994 Violent Crime Control Act, which provided for 100,000 new police officers, $9.7 billion in funding for prisons, and $6.1 billion in funding for prevention programs. She described these superpredator children as having: “No conscience, no empathy; we can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.” (After being confronted by a protestor at a February 2016 presidential campaign event, Clinton apologized for this comment.)
While juvenile violent crime did increase at the beginning of the 1990s, it began to fall in the mid-1990s and reached record lows in the early 2000s. The superpredator theory was debunked, but many of the harsh juvenile sentences remained in place.
When Miller was decided in 2012, 28 states and the federal government had mandatory JLWOP and 15 allowed for discretionary JLWOP. Since Miller, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, Wyoming, Vermont, and Utah have abolished JLWOP entirely.
The superpredator theory was debunked, but many of the harsh juvenile sentences remained in place.
In Michigan and in eight other states, 17-year-olds are still automatically tried as adults. (In recent months, both Michigan and Louisiana have taken up bills that would mandate the prosecution of 17-year-olds as minors.) Michigan law also imposes the same penalty on both those who actually commit homicides as well as on accessories, which is how many minors end up with JLWOP sentences. “We have this extremely broad homicide law which says aiding and abetting, felony murder, and premeditated first degree are all treated exactly the same,” said Deborah LaBelle, director of the ACLU’s Juvenile Life Without Parole Initiative.
LaBelle also said that the harsh sentencing practices mean that many judges are using mitigating factors against minors: “Instead of them seeing these matters as mitigating circumstances, the judges appear to be doing the exact opposite of what the Supreme Court said,” she said. “One, you don’t blame the child for this, these are mitigating circumstances, and two, you are not a prophet. You cannot tell at the front end whether or not a child can be rehabilitated down the line.”
Juwan Wickware, 19, is escorted out of the courtroom during his sentencing by Genesee Circuit Judge Archie Hayman on July 26, 2013.
Photo: Zack Wittman/The Journal/AP
Like Taylor, Wickware moved frequently as a child and his mother had to raise him alone because his father was incarcerated. He and his siblings were removed from their home by child protective services at a time when their mother was unemployed and did not have a permanent home. When he was 14, Wickware, who was deemed functionally illiterate during his mitigation hearing, was suspended from school for 120 days. He started hanging out on the streets with older gang members and, because he was small for his age — just 5-foot-5 and slight — he felt he needed a gun to protect himself.
At the sentencing, Judge Archie Hayman said of Wickware: “I think his family failed him first. And I think, secondly, the school may have failed him. And then I think, thirdly, possibly society as a whole has failed him to some extent. … I think his family life has been chaotic; it’s been unstable. I think it unfortunately has put him in a position where he is not socially developed and lacks the social skills to be in society.”
But Wickware changed in prison. The boy who was reading at a third-grade level when he went into prison earned his GED. He has worked on curbing his anger, and doesn’t swear as much as he used to. He was eventually resentenced, but his earliest release date is March 28, 2042.
“When I first came [to prison], my goal was to get myself right. Every day I wake up, I have to have an accomplishment,” he said during an interview at the St. Louis Correctional Facility. “I’m stronger now. I’m a man now. It’s over for all that kid stuff.”
Judge Diane Druzinski of the Macomb County Circuit Court calls William Cataldo, Macomb County assistant prosecutor, left, and defense attorney Joseph Kosmala to the bench during the trial of Ihab Masalmani in Mount Clemens, Mich., on Sept. 22, 2010.
Photo: Andre J. Jackson/AP
One of the things that struck people most during Ihab Masalmani’s trial was his behavior and apparent lack of remorse. He laughed at times and spat on the floor. Even his own attorney described him as “feral.” Back then, Masalmani’s lawyers insisted that he had not killed Landry. Now, Masalmani, who is serving his life sentence at the G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility, about 40 miles south of Lansing, says that he did commit the murder, and that Taylor did not know that he was going to kill Landry and was not present when he did.
From just his voice alone, Masalmani seems to be easygoing, self-assured. He is matter of fact about everything, from the details of the crime to those of his tumultuous childhood.
He told me during a phone interview that he is telling the truth now because he has done some soul searching in prison, and has been reading books on emotional intelligence and psychology in order to better understand himself. “By me learning what I’m learning now is really what led to me feeling like it’s injustice on my co-defendant’s behalf to be locked up for something that he didn’t even do and had no conspiracy to doing,” Masalmani said. “I feel like the system railroaded both of us, but he got it the worst for the simple fact that he’s sitting in here for something he didn’t participate in or had no knowledge of what it was leading to.”
When Masalmani was 8, his mother sent him and his sister by themselves from Lebanon to Florida. The children were held in an immigration detention center and when they were released, went to live with an uncle, who Masalmani said sexually abused his sister. His sister was eventually deported, and Masalmani moved from one foster home to another. In one home, according to court documents, his foster mother used marijuana and had sex in his presence. Masalmani told me that he struggled in school, in part because he didn’t speak English when he came to the U.S.
Masalmani said he told Taylor to tackle Landry as he exited the Quiznos, so that they could steal his car. But, he said, “[Taylor] never went through with that. Everything else that happened after that was something that I was coming up with as it went along. [Taylor] just played along. He just was there. He didn’t know that I was going to do that to that man — drive to a vacant house and kill him. He didn’t know none of that.”
Masalmani said that even though he showed Landry his gun, he was able to put him at ease. “I made everybody feel as though everything was going to be OK,” he said. “I’m assuming Matt Landry thought that too. I’m telling him like, ‘We’re just going to use this car and give it back to you and let you go.’”
But as he drove, Masalmani realized that he could not just let Landry go, as he had seen his and Taylor’s faces, and would likely report them to the police. Masalmani did not tell Taylor what he was thinking, and was making decisions moment to moment. Though Taylor maintains he was never left alone with Landry, Masalmani said that he left Taylor and Landry in the car when he went to an ATM to withdraw money using Landry’s debit card. Then, he drove to the burnt-out house on Maddelein Street. The three men got out of the car. Masalmani said that he told Taylor to go back to the car while he went inside with Landry. There, he made Landry turn, and shot him in the back of the head.
Photo: EyeEm/Getty Images
This is the image that haunts Matthew Landry’s mother, Doreen. “The image of them walking Matthew from one house into another house, putting him on his knees, putting a gun to the back of his head, shooting him, is an image that wakes me up in the middle of the night in a panic,” she said, right after Masalmani and Taylor were resentenced. “I have to live with that. That’s my life sentence. And there’s nothing that’s going to lighten that for me, so why should their sentence be lightened?”
Jody Robinson, president of the National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Murderers, believes that victims’ families need the closure that comes with a life without parole sentence, even in the cases of minors. Without it, families are forced to relive the horror of their loved ones’ murders with each parole hearing. “When you’re talking about having a loved one ripped from you, you go in there and you’re seeking justice,” said Robinson, whose brother James was killed by a teen in 1990. “A life without parole sentence ensures that when you walk out of court, once you’re through the appeals process, you can put this behind you, at least the legal aspect of it, and you can work on your life, and healing.”
Judges are elected in Michigan, and advocates say they feel pressure from victims’ families and the public to give the harshest sentences possible, particularly in high-profile cases.
Judge Fred Mester sat on the Oakland County, Michigan, bench for 27 years, and during that time sentenced juveniles to life without parole. “I was caught up in the same idea that you do the crime, you do the time,” Mester told me. “That is, if you do an adult crime — that is a physical assault, a sexual assault, or murder — that you must do the time of whatever the maximum sentence would be.” Mester takes issue, however, with the way sentencing guidelines changed in the 1970s and 1980s, with a move from individual justice — “You look at the victim, you look at the crime, you look at the defendant, and come up with what you believe would be a fair sentence” — to mandatory sentences that left judges with few options.
Judges feel pressure from victims’ families and the public to give the harshest sentences possible, particularly in high-profile cases.
Such was the case with Jennifer Pruitt, whom Mester sentenced to life without parole in 1993 for a crime committed when she was 16. Mester had two options — he could have had Pruitt tried as a juvenile, which meant she would have been held just until her 21st birthday if found guilty, or he could have had her tried as an adult, facing a mandatory life sentence. Even though Pruitt had not been the one to actually commit the murder, Mester felt that incarcerating her for just a few years as a juvenile would have been too lenient.
After hearing about the sexual abuse Pruitt suffered in prison, and also seeing how she had matured, and was acting as a mentor and advocate for other women, Mester has now become an advocate himself, pushing for judges to follow the Miller guidelines and return the focus to “individual justice and rehabilitation.”
The problem is that many judges are still giving life without parole sentences because they’re simply used to handing out mandatory life sentences for certain crimes. “As a judge you become so used to these violent acts and you think the best way, or the only way, is ‘I have to keep you away from the rest of society, not even to punish, but to protect those people who aren’t criminals,’” said Judge Stephen Borrello, of the Michigan Court of Appeals, in a recent phone interview.
The other issue is that although it’s been almost four years since the Miller ruling, some judges, prosecutors, and even public defenders don’t know about Miller. Advocates say that because minors facing life without parole sentences have been transferred to adult courts, they are sometimes assigned public defenders who do not know much about adolescent brain development, the details of Miller, and the need or requirements for a mitigation hearing.
But the biggest issue is rehabilitation. Even if judges see potential for rehabilitation, there is no guarantee that minors will receive the counseling, education, and other services they need in prison in order to truly change. “It’s very rare that we see people who are actually rehabilitated by the prison system,” said Borrello. “The only thing we know how to do, that we’re really good at, is locking them up. It costs a lot of money to actually rehabilitate somebody. It costs a lot of money to give somebody an education.”
Both Taylor and Masalmani say that they haven’t had access to adequate psychosocial services in prison. Taylor has tried to take a number of classes, including a violent offenders program, “Cage Your Rage,” and a substance abuse course, even though he says he doesn’t have a substance abuse problem. He is on waiting lists for these courses that are two to three years long.
“They have to put those guys in them classes with shorter out dates or out dates period. They put them in there first,” Taylor said. “So the only thing for me to do while I’m in here is get in trouble. So I got to be strong enough to remain focused on getting up out of here because I’m set up for failure.”
Taylor did not show much emotion either time the judge delivered his life without parole sentence. But inside, he told me, he felt “every feeling in the world except happy. I was mad. I was angry, frustrated. I was actually angry at myself. I was angry at my attorney.” Taylor believes his case was mishandled from beginning to end. When he turned himself in, he was questioned without the presence of an adult relative or a lawyer. Detective Steven Sellers testified that they could not find Taylor’s mother. Taylor told me he was scared and said things out of fear that were later used against him. Detective Sellers confirmed that during the interrogation he told Taylor that he would never see daylight again and he would be imprisoned for life if he didn’t cooperate. Both Taylor and his mother say that his initial attorney, Louis Zaidan, fell asleep numerous times during the trial. Zaidan did not respond to requests for an interview.
But the biggest injustice for Taylor is that he is in prison for a crime that Masalmani has admitted to, and has said Taylor knew nothing about. Taylor believes that the truth is irrelevant to the prosecutor and judge, because they were focused solely on getting a conviction. He also feels that because Masalmani was the main suspect, no one, including his lawyer, really paid much attention to what was happening in his case. “The case is not really about me. It’s about him,” says Taylor. “I was just a string-along. They don’t really care about me.”
Masalmani’s confession had little impact.
During Masalmani’s resentencing hearing, his attorney, Valerie Newman, presented his confession to the court as evidence that he had matured in prison, but also in the hopes that it would lessen Taylor’s sentence. Judge Druzinski and the prosecutor declined requests for an interview, but given that Taylor and Masalmani were both resentenced to life, it appears that Masalmani’s confession had little impact.
“Judges are focusing on the crime, and that’s not what Miller is about,” says Newman. “These are all bad crimes. We know that. What we’re doing is looking at whether or not someone is irreparably corrupt, or whether they have potential for rehabilitation.”
When he was initially sentenced, Taylor apologized to Landry’s family, not as an admission of guilt, but because “[Landry] lost his life for something that was not necessary.” Taylor’s mother also expressed her condolences to the Landry family.
Masalmani has also wanted to reach out to the Landrys, though he says his words and actions would do little to ease their pain, but his lawyer has advised him not to. Newman also wanted to contact the Landry family as well, after Masalmani’s hearing. “I’m a big believer in restorative justice and I think these folks have got to be in tremendous pain, and sitting through that hearing had to have been tremendously difficult,” she said. “I just wanted to let them know that I feel their pain. Criminal defense attorneys are not heartless people. I would like them to understand that this is in no way meant as a disservice to Matt Landry’s life.”
For now, Taylor and Masalmani are appealing their resentencing, but there is also a case, People v. Skinner, which could affect theirs and other Michigan JLWOP cases.
In August 2015, Judge Borrello heard the appeal of Tia Skinner, who was sentenced to life without parole for a crime committed when she was 17. He ruled that based on the Sixth Amendment, a jury, not the judge, should determine whether a minor’s crime is evidence of “irreparable corruption” warranting a life without parole sentence. The case is now with the Michigan Supreme Court.
Taylor is hopeful that he will one day be released. He says that it isn’t that he’s oblivious to reality, just that what you put your mind to is what manifests, so he doesn’t like to focus too much on the fact that he is currently in prison for the rest of his life. Still, he doesn’t tell people that he thinks that one day he’ll be released. “Having hope is a sign of weakness,” he said. “I got a lot of time. You don’t want to be soft in here.”
Taylor sticks to himself, to stay out of trouble, and spends much of his time listening to and writing music. When he is released from prison, he plans to leave Michigan, perhaps go to Florida, perhaps New York, to pursue his music career. He hopes to be a successful rapper.
“There is nothing, nothing, that can bring me down. Nothing can stop me from having hope of anything that I’m putting my mind into. Nothing,” he said. “I don’t care if you tell me no a million times. I’m going to still be like, yeah, whatever. They got to bury me with that.”
This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.
The misinformation in this article is mind boggling. Do you even research and get facts at all? What about the crimes these two committed before the kidnapping? on the same day! I could not even stand to finish it. FYI Landry was shoved into his trunk per the witnesses who saw it and attempted to follow the car while making the 911 call. He layed in the trunk while these two ate the Quiznos that he bought for his sick fiancee, not giving any care as to the man that they just took. I hate that I live in such a society that blames the victims first. This “child” knew exactly what was going on and what was to happen. He was responsible in every capacity. Doesn’t matter color of his skin, he was fully and completely a part and is fully and completely responsible. I am glad that I only happened to run across this dribble by accident as you apparently ignore the facts or you just simply do not divulge them to your readers.
Every time, someone white is killed by an American of African descent, with few exceptions, its white people killing themselves. That if it were not conditions such as but not limited too; slavery, economic and social deprivation, blacks would not hold to perspectives of survival they hold today.
This is not intended in any whatsoever, to release the responsibility of murder, or the internal damage, both physical and mental, a loss of this magnitude could cause.
However, if it were not for the conditions mentioned above, quite possibly, Taylor would have had parents to create a conducive environment of success and enrichment.
Subsequently, he would have never been there to participate to whatever degree in the taking of someone’s life. Instead, he could have been a legislator, chemist or merely a plain and simple good, productive person.
In reference to “rehabilitation”, ha, what a joke. Each and every dollar going into the now, profit for prison system, is gobbled-up by unions and other entities which benefit on the system.
Unless and until, is the only two words which address this pain of a people, both perpetrator and victim and eventual demise of a country.
Private prisons employ union workers? Which ones?
Reading stories like these is hard.
I agree, 100 percent
I do not care what the rest of the nations do. They do not have the trash in them at the levels we have and they do not have feral black people …….yet. If a person is old enough to do a vicious crime or even participate in one then they are old enough to get a full measure of punishment.
Interesting terminology, “feral black people”. In light of: 400 years of slavery, 100 yeas of Jim Crow, and the psychological damage this inflicted on Americans of African descent.
A more applicable analogy: every time a white is murdered by a black, is in fact, white Americans looking into the bestiality of themselves.
The term “super-predator” has become a hot political topic with Hilary currently running for president. yes, it was under William Jefferson Clinton that the term was used by lawmakers and correction community elites to instill fear in the heart of the electorate. Yet the rise of drug gangs during that period revealed an extremely troubling trend. In 2015, a Journal of Adolescent Health study concluded that 1.2 million adolescents (2 per cent of the adolescent population) in the US were affiliated with gangs: “The study found that an average of 2 percent of youth in the U.S. are gang members, with involvement highest at age 14, when about 5 percent of youth are in gangs. Youth in gangs also come from all types of backgrounds.” In 2015, James Howell of the National Gang Center claims that “In the past five years we’ve seen an 8 percent increase in number of gangs, an 11 percent increase in members and a 23 percent increase in gang-related homicides.”
1. During the mid-nineties, it was estimated that roughly 800,000 individuals were already members of “youth” gangs.
2. There are roughly thirty thousand youth gangs in America as of 2015
3. Between 1990 and 2005, Incarceration Rate per 100,000 of youth gang members rose from 297 to 491
4. According to a 1999 survey by the National Gang Crime Research Center, gang membership within adult state correctional facilities increased from 9.4 percent in 1991 to 24.7 percent in 1999
5. By 2009, it was estimated 200,000 gang-involved prisoners were currently imprisoned.
6. Although initiation rites among the largest gangs range widely, they almost always involve the initiate engaging in a violent criminal act. Female initiates are required to subject themselves to gang rape by active members.
Those of us who have personally experienced gang related activity on a regular basis – by virtue of proximity alone – understand the degree to which our children are at risk of being affected by those activities. Rape, assault, gun violence, armed robbery, heavy drug use and trafficking, and unremitting predation of our children (reported ages 5-17) are mandatory elements of gang culture.
Victim blaming. If you want young people to behave better, give them a better world to grow up in and a better life to which they can look forward.
Keep treating the poor, black and brown kids of our nation as we have and routinely do and you can expect to see the same results we’ve been seeing.
Unless, of course, those kids start to wise up and target the people who are actually responsible for their predicaments, instead of their neighbors. Maybe that’s what it will take to get some serious attention. Hmmm?
Give a hungry man some fish and he allays his hunger for only a single day or two; teach that hungry man how to fish and he can feed himself indefinitely. The “poor, black and brown kids” of our nation today have far more opportunity than the average man had just a generation ago. But recognizing and embracing opportunity is a problem for those who expect that the world should be laid at their feet. My parents generation were far worse off than the “poor” today, yet they endeavored to achieve a level of education that would allow them to leave the world in a bit better shape than they found it. NO ONE GAVE THEM ANYTHING – NEITHER DID THEY EXPECT IT. They were blessed with the understanding that opportunity is merely the end result of hard work, self denial, and determination. Their efforts were not squandered on drugs, alcohol, indiscriminate sex or any other form of self indulgence; rather they were coordinated and sustained by means of a common belief in the fruits of virtue and an abiding commitment to the common good. Compare this ethos to that of the average gang banger and those of his/her family.
That still does not address the current problem. Remember that people will interpret information differently and will act on the information that they’re aware of based upon past experiences. So a good question would probably be “how did their families wind up like that?
Each individual is possessed of the capacity to become self aware; absent that capacity, the question of rehabilitation would not even be worth considering. Individuals from very good backgrounds can be every bit as self serving as the poorest sop on the planet. Socrates once argued that if men truly understood the karmic aspect of their own nature then they would never do anything but that which promoted and sustained a life-affirming sense of self. We are not fated to be slaves of our environment. Man has an innate capacity for truth which, in turn, is the rock bed of self determination. Absent an accurate sense of reality, man is incapable of formulating life-sustaining strategies that promote the general well being of all.
And yet here we are.
Necessity may be the mother of invention, but laziness is the father.
People who get up at at 4:00am and work 150 hour weeks have done nothing but hold back progress for centuries. Just as slavery held back the technological progress that would destroy it, the human robot (otherwise known as the work ethic) stretched what should have been a historical blip of human labor into centuries of torture and nightmare.
As we can now begin to imagine a world that is completely different than was has come before, I want to extend hearty fuck you to all preachers of human robots. To all those who never saw a machine that couldn’t be replaced by a slave, and to all those who preach that manual labor is god’s grace–I wish for you your worst nightmare–a life of leisure.
The best thing computers did was destroy the work ethic. There is no better description of computer programming than applied laziness.
Every effort in life requires work – getting out of bed, bathing, acquiring food, sex, walking the dog, bowling… the body consumes energy by virtue of its very existence. The sustained replenishment of that energy requires work. Bottom line… life is work. Your metaphor of the robot however touches on a noteworthy point. What is it specifically that separates man from all other animals on the planet? It is his capacity for self awareness is it not? Absent this capacity, man would be every bit the slave of instinct (a biological robot if you will). Thus it can be rightfully said that self awareness is the key to individual sovereignty. And conversely, that which keeps us from becoming more fully self aware in each moment of time is that which enslaves us. Drugs, alcohol, indiscriminate sex, gratuitous violence, or any other form of habit-forming self indulgence is the mean by which man is robbed of his innate capacity for self-awareness and, by extension, self-determination. Yes, even mindless labor is a form of enslavement.
Life does not require work, it requires productivity. There is a huge difference between work and productivity.
Nobody spins wheels faster than those obsessed with working. But getting things done and spinning wheels are two different things. The work ethic is opposed to productivity because productivity opposes the work ethic. Again, laziness is the father of invention.
I swear, 95% of the work ethic is patting yourself on the back for how much work you do. My suggestion, more productivity and less self aggrandizement.
The only noble work is work that eliminates work. Everything else is just survival.
I know on a certain level it is comforting to think that those that who don’t agree with you, or do things you believe are a sin–that they have no free will, that they are under the spell of the wrong god, but this belief, which eliminates the reason for debate and persuasion, seems to always lead to violence–simply because it eliminates the reason for debate and persuasion.
If you don’t like sex, drugs and rock and roll–more power to you. But I would be much more convinced by your lifestyle if it didn’t require so much external validation.
“Productivity” is defined as the effectiveness of productive effort
Productive (def): achieving or producing a significant result
Work (def): the effort done in order to achieve a result.
One can not be productive without doing work.
Any work done that consciously and deliberately promotes the common good is “noble” in nature. Admittedly, pure rest is essential to acquiring serenity of beingness. Yet that serenity would be short lived without making the effort to acquire life sustaining sustenance.
Let me try it this way.
Life rewards expending the least amount of energy in pursuit of life sustaining sustenance. This the lesson of life. It is a lesson as simple as water rolling downhill. It is also the exact opposite of what is preached by the work ethic.
Laziness is the basis of all life. It is the apex. To use the least amount of energy. If there is any morality built into the universe it is this. It is also the exact opposite of what is preached by the work ethic.
I understand completely the how and why of the myths we invented to survive crazy mothers, drunken fathers, and universe crueler than both put together. And how those myths survived because, for the time and context, they did more good than evil. I will not deny those things.
But the work ethic is ultimately preaching against the universe, and we live in a different time and context–with many thanks to those who worked themselves to death so we could get to this point–but to fetishize sacrifice to the point where it becomes more important than what we were sacrificing for–is to miss the point completely. The goal is not to expend energy the goal is productivity. More stuff for less work. Welcome to what the universe is rewarding most. It’s almost as if god were taking a huge shit on the idea of the work ethic.
If you can own the output of a machine that you own–then obviously what you are saying is false. I’m pretty sure capitalism won’t survive at this point if a person doesn’t own the output of a machine they own–so I’m going to go out on a limb and say you probably aren’t arguing that. Although the socialism of machine output is an interesting idea.
Productivity is a moral judgment. Expending energy is not moral in and of itself. In fact, for the foreseeable future, what common morality humans can agree upon seems to be converging on the idea that expending less energy for the same thing is good, and expending less energy for more and better things is really really good.
It won’t be long before the work ethic is a fetish. People will meet online and then go dig holes with shovels or spoons or claws or something, and they will work themselves into such a frenzy that they then won’t go have great sex each other.
As a preface to answering this latest comment, let me remind you that it is you who introduced the term “work ethic” into the conversation. I am now assuming that you are defining the term as “a belief in the moral benefit and importance of work and its inherent ability to strengthen character.” This topic of discussion began when I took exception to the view that the “poor” would fare better if they simply received a hand out. Again, it is my position that handouts only nurture future dependence. As man is defined by his innate ability to rise above instinct and act as his own sovereign agent, less dependence equates to a greater degree of choice (aka freedom).
A proper understanding of ones own nature in context to that which gives rise to it is essential to the efficient use of energy to which you are currently alluding (as work requires energy). The notion that “productivity is a moral judgement” is way to nebulous to address as “productivity” can mean many different things to different people and cultures. However, the energy expended in consciously promoting the common good is correctly understood as morally biased by definition. Conversely, energy expended on behaviors (or lack thereof) that undermine ones capacity to survive as a consciously sovereign individual can be understood as wasted. As all life is biased to its own propagation, wasted energy can be understood to be anti-life. Thus the moral bedrock of truly “productive” work relies upon its ability to efficiently optimize ones overall sense of well being in context to that of mankind in general.
I think your first paragraph really gets to the issue here. Work, for you, is not about productivity, but about deserving what you have. Those that do not deserve what they have are getting handouts.
Now, this may not surprise you, but people who hold work above productivity are generally not very productive. A person boasting that they spent forty hours doing the dishes from last night’s dinner is probably the last person you want doing dishes. If I was completely unproductive, I too would want the concept of deserving to be based on hard work as opposed to actual productivity.
You tend to see this type of thing in fledgling political and social movements because sacrifice is seen as much more important than productivity. The leaders are chosen based upon who will “dedicate” the most time, so the leaders tend to be those that are unproductive and lack a life.
Sacrifice is not productivity. In the very christian way we do sacrifice–sacrifice has become the opposite of productivity.
Now if productivity is the measure of deserving, then those that own the most machines deserves the most. This seems like a very silly way to determine who is most deserving—especially since the NSA is going to win this one.
In a world of robots and machines, I don’t understand what you mean by handouts. If I have a tiny little robot that weeds vegetable gardens (and I will be so pissed if I have to be the person that invents this thing) am I now getting a handout? I have received something beneficial without doing any work. Is this somehow bad?
That was one of the points I was trying to make. Productive toward what? Expending energy by itself cannot be intrinsically moral. Expending energy toward what?
Don’t take this the wrong way, but the last person I would take survival advice from is someone still working for a living. This really gets to the idea of work over productivity.
Your morality wants a world that doesn’t exist (there is nothing wrong with this, as this is the basis of all morality). A world where hard work is rewarded more than productivity. If I worked harder than I was productive, then this is exactly the world I would find moral, but here is the thing–this is not our current reality, and pretending that it is doesn’t actually make you deserve. I know it doesn’t seem fair, but work without productivity is worse than doing nothing at all, because you are wasting energy.
Hard work is only symbol and pantomime. It is a vacation (a strange vacation indeed), it is camping. It is dress up and pretend. It’s like going on Outward Bound or playing Tonka Trucks. The point is not productivity, in fact the point is the opposite of productivity. Hard work is the drug that really uptight people can’t stop taking. Hard work is something we as a society put up with in the same way we put up with drug abusers, or artists–we figure at some point you guys will get your shit together and actually become “productive” and until then, as long as you have found something that makes you happy, then more power to you.
More accurately: Working hard is like riding a bike. The only people that want to do it are those that don’t have to. In other words, the people praising hard work tend to be wearing spandex.
Again, one cannot be productive without doing work; the terms are not mutually exclusive as you suggest. Your fanciful conjecture about a future world wherein all physical labor is done by robots actually requires robots. Someone does not design, manufacture, maintain, and repair robots lying in bed. Although I agree that machines are labor saving devices, I do not believe that laziness is the driving force behind their invention. One does not merely produce for production sake alone; if this were the case then farmers would simply leave their crops unpicked in the field.
Again, the energy expended in consciously promoting the common good is both productive and moral. For example, a conscientious farmer produces healthy food with the understanding that it best facilitates the essential needs of his fellow man.
Again, life is work. Every activity requires an expenditure of energy. Working to survive is a good thing. One must first survive before one can endeavor to do any good. Ideally, one would want to “make a living” promoting the common good. If I was planning to grow healthy food in my own garden out of a desire to be self sufficient, then I would readily consider the advice of someone who produces healthy food for a living. This might surprise someone like you, but some people actually enjoy working toward the goal of promoting the common good while simultaneously promoting their own sense of wellbeing.
@Karl
I think we both understand each other’s arguments at this point. But still…
We have had robots since forever…we just called them workers.
I know post scarcity is a hard thing to get your head around, but robots can be designed, manufactured, maintained and repaired by other robots. I don’t know why people think that robot repairman will be the last human job left. It’s like how people are blown away by a 3D printer that can print a 3D printer. That’s kind of the point.
I agree with this completely, but I have found that those that love gardening the most are not the ones insisting that people wouldn’t be hungry if they only worked harder in their own garden. :)
It has been fun, and one day we should talk about gardening because all that hard work and sacrifice makes the food taste fucking fantastic, so I am not immune what you are saying, but as soon as there is a weeding robot I will never weed again–and the food will taste even better.
In conclusion, irrigation, like rain, is not a handout.
@Non’Importante
Never been in the military, and never wanted to be.
Weren’t you saying last September that you were in the military? Or was that just used to complete a metaphor? It seems to run contrary to your statements here.
I would basically agree with you. Technology, like monies are largely overrated, but I think each has its place.
RCL
Right-wing, puritanical nastiness — and you don’t even know it.
“NO ONE GAVE THEM ANYTHING”
That is so totally full of shit, and such a common refrain among the “I got mine Jack” crowd that it is both laughable and nauseating.
You give me an accurate history of your parents’ generation, and their ancestry, and I’ll show you a list of things they were given that is longer than your arm.
Every thing is relative Doug. The average American lives better than a king did just two hundred years ago. Yes, by virtue of the time in which they were born, my grandparents had advantages that past generations did not possess – just as our generation has further advantages and life fulfilling opportunities than those that went before; that is the nature of progress. Absent an awareness of those opportunities – or the method by which those opportunities can be fully exploited – the range of choice is limited, is it not? Please be mindful of the fact that I am not simply talking about material well being here. Rather, I am talking about the range of choice that is available to the average American. yet, you have completely avoided my central point… why is that? Are you of the mind that the “poor” are less capable of self awareness? Or, that their innate capacity for truth is lesser than their wealthy counterparts?
One more shot, then I write you off as a hopeless part of the problem.
“Every thing is relative Doug.”
Yes, and among the things that are relative are the things your parents, grandparents and earlier generations were given that were not available to the poor, black, brown, immigrant, etc. families who lived in the dame times.
I repeat the challenge: provide me with the accurate background information and I’ll make a list for you.
“Rather, I am talking about the range of choice that is available to the average American. . .”
Correction: “. . . available to the average middle class American, especially if she is white or Asian and not seen as a member of a ‘lower’ class or ‘undesirable’ category.”
“yet, you have completely avoided my central point… why is that?”
Actually, the problem is that I have been addressing, exactly your central point, while you don’t even know what it is, because it is buried so deeply in beliefs that you have never examined or questioned: You believe that poor and disadvantaged people are responsible for their own poverty and disadvantage — and that’s a giant, nasty, truly evil crock of horseshit.
“Are you of the mind that the ‘poor’ are less capable of self awareness? Or, that their innate capacity for truth is lesser than their wealthy counterparts?”
I’m “of the mind” that the most effective way to achieve “success” in America is to be born into a successful family. And I’m “of the mind” that this “opportunity” you keep talking about is mostly limited to the fortunate sons and daughters of our “homeland” and that the upward mobility story is mostly a myth.
As for who it is I believe is lacking in an “innate capacity for truth . . .”
It is clear that you equate personal well being with the capacity to acquire material possessions. Some of the most well adjusted people I know are materially impoverished by choice. They choose not to be encumbered by any material thing that does not promote their overall sense of well being. Food, clothing, and a roof over their head is all that is required to sustain their physical well being.
Conversely, some of the most miserable people that I know are those whose single-minded service to self has made them materially wealthy yet spiritually impoverished.
Let’s follow your tortured logic:
1. You lament over the fact that the capitalist system has resulted in an intractably “impoverished” underclass
2. Thus if someone is born poor, then they are fated to stay poor
3. You further argue that the system was originally created, and is being currently sustained, by a small class of advantaged elites (the upper crust if you will) who can only maintain their sense of elevated status by keeping the poor in their place.
4. And lastly you conclude that, but for the fact of their inherited impoverishment, the poor could be every bit as “advantaged” as those that have created the system that enslaves them.
Conclusion: You believe that ones sense of well being is exclusively derived from material advantage. Thus if you just simply give a poor man enough money to match that of the average elite then his/her own sense of well being can also be sustained by keeping the remaining poor in their place. After all, the system only works to the advantage of those who already possess wealth.
“It is clear that you equate personal well being with the capacity to acquire material possessions.”
Utter fucking nonsense. Either you’re on some oft-repeated hobbyhorse ride and you haven’t bothered to try to understand what I wrote, or you have a problem with reading comprehension.
As a result of that essential failure to have the slightest idea what I’m talking about, the rest of your rant is irrelevant.
It is all good Doug. You said your piece, and I said mine. I am confident that others will be able to correctly parse our respective positions.
I think you are conflating material and conscious, moral issues here. Yes, there are some sort of connections between the two (most people like to believe), but they are not that positive, direct or mechanical. This is what makes us human agents. Masalmani and Taylor had the moral agency to see what they were doing was wrong. Yet, they consciously chose to do it, even if they are (as they themselves, and the author see it seems believes as well) being “railroad by an unjust society” …
I don’t believe that Marxian b#llsh!t about us being “the products of the socio-economic conditions in which we live”. Luis Armstrong, Chaplin lived under -truly- abject poverty, too. Gandhi quit being some petit bourgeois. St. Francis gave up his wealth, even his own clothing to the poor. Manning, Snowden, Assange have given up their comfort for a noble moral cause, as Miko Peled (the son of a very Zionist family has)
// __ An honest Israeli Jew tells the Real Truth about Israel
~
youtube.com/watch?v=etXAm-OylQQ
~
// __ The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, by Miko Peled
~
amazon.com/dp/193598215X/
~
Here comes the interesting part of the connections I think you are implicitly establishing. Some 15 years ago I met a guy with a critically thinking mind and we had very long conversations about (the social constructs of) race and racial disparity. (I am black myself (more like Mischling), but I naturally identify more with “the poor”, as in “give me the poor …” and deep in my heart to me racial prejudices are just some of the many bullsh!tting issues people like to entertain their minds with)
One of the amazing things I have learned about the U.S. is how the poor forcibly see themselves through the standards imposed on them by the rich. He was telling me that his parents got jobs in a “white” neighborhood where they were the only black people within miles, so “for better or worse” he had to attend a “white kids only” school … and all other kids called him “porky monkey” or some sort of similar sh!t (he was still very offended and anxious about it and I couldn’t hide my laughters about both the stupidity of it all and his level of anxiety about such b#llsh!t)
He told me in that -public- school all the students had free, private parking, that it housed a McDonald and a BurgerKing, that it had an indoor swimming pool that all kids had their laptops (even before that campaign about all students having one started). To him that was very discriminatory and unjust, but then I asked him why and told him that to me driving a last model car or having fast food restaurants in the school, heck not even having a laptop is important. Who said that owning a laptop makes you smarter, healthier, happier?
He would tell me that that was unjust anyway … and I would reply to him “let whities have all that cr@p for themselves, I will read off books, learn by heart the times tables (as I did, because I had to, even the prime factorization of all numbers up to 12^2=144, divisibility patterns …), walk to school if I had to …” How exactly is that bad for me or anyone? In fact, that would teach you moral endurance from an early age.
He told me then that I had this “freedom of thought” because I grew up in a society (Cuba, which he had visited in various occasions and knew very well) that is not clearly demarcated by racial injustice … and he may be right to some extent, but I think my point is still valid.
I would tell him that in Cuba the Castros talk all the sh!t they do and most people don’t believe them at all, that I found regular folks here in the U.S. to be more brainwashed (by all that constant commercial, pretentious b#llsh!t …) than in Cuba under a dictatorship …
At the end of the conversation we pretty much agreed to disagree.
I have also had similar conversations with people from other walks of life who have discovered that there is “nothing wrong with being poor”. Some of them have confided to me that after visiting South America, India, it took them a little time to realize it (they search and search “for ‘something'”, “for something basically wrong with it” (how could people grow up without “readily available choices” and be just fine? (they must be hiding something ;-)) …)) I remember a nice speech about about a very successful business lady from Asia (India I think) talking about her childhood. She said that she never had toys, that her toys were the house spoons and her father’s MS DOS 5.0 book …
The other day my nephew told me he had a friend who had hit 100 home runs. I was celebrating his having such sports friendly buddies, but then on my way home I realized he meant one of those stupid computer games ;-) When I told him I had spotted his little lie, he asked me candidly: “what lie?”(!?!?!?!) I grew up poor like most other kids around me “wishing I owned some other stuff”, swimming in the open ocean, climbing trees, playing (at times fighting) with other kids and “there is nothing wrong with me …” (I think ;-))
RCL
Yes, spot on! When we allow others to provide the lens through which we evaluate ourselves, then we are merely becoming an unwitting agent of their intentions – this is the true “loss of agency”to which you refer, is it not? To think of ourselves as “poor” simply because we do not possess that which we do not actually need to become evermore self-realized in time, is just a waste of energy. “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” Using material wealth as the metric by which one gauges a successful life is a suckers game.
I remember a speech by president Bush shortly after the WTC attacks of 911 wherein he urged all Americans to reciprocate by “shopping more.”
That’s some semi-slick rationalization for structural inequality, RCL. You could probably make a few bucks shilling for 0.1 percenters.
But it’s only semi-slick and, in the end, it’s mostly random noise.
Go read a couple of thousand pages on “relative deprivation” and its effects on individuals and society and then get back to us.
Well, I thought there was nothing wrong with me, but apparently my self assessment isn’t universally shared ;-)
Salzmann, St. Francis said (my own reading, editing, sanitizing of (what I believe to be) his basic message from Catholic self-flagellating nonsense):
“Above all the graces and gifts God has granted us with is one’s own
capacity of overcoming oneself”
// __ How St Francis, walking one day with brother Leo, explained to
him what things are perfect joy
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/ugolino/flowers.iii.viii.html
IMO, the 0.1% never even attain a sense of what St Francis meant. They are “feral” in their own ways.
We the 99.9% at the very least are blessed by being able to understand St Francis; maxim. Even if we don’t put it to good use. Understanding St Francis sets you free.
As they say, it is not “what it is” but what you do with it.
RCL
“IMO, the 0.1% never even attain a sense of what St Francis meant. They are “feral” in their own ways.”
Indeed, in their own, very special, very dangerous and destructive ways — and it seldom brings them a moment of contentment. I know; I used to manage their businesses, eat at their table, fly in their fancy aircraft, and listen to them worry about whether they were paying “the help” to generously (“They’re not like we are, Doug.”).
Fan though I am of Francis, and of Dorothy, Peter, the Berrigans, et al., there is a very real danger that homilies such as those you have been delivering here will be (as they have been for millennia) used to justify structural inequality and class oppression.
That’s why aristocrats through the ages have worked so hard to keep the clergy on-side, the better to encourage them to advise the peasants to be content with their God-given lot.
“To an orphan child dyin’ of hunger,
God is just a half a loaf of bread.”
~Hoyt Axton
“Judge Druzinski suggested they were proof that Taylor was unlikely to change. “The difficulty of defendant’s upbringing is the only factor which could be said to weigh in favor of an indeterminate sentence,” she ruled, “but this factor also suggests that defendant’s prospects for rehabilitation are minimal.”
“The prosecutor, William Cataldo, implied during the mitigation hearing that Taylor needed to be in prison, where his life would have some order, as opposed to on the streets, where it had been so chaotic.”
The logic inherent in these quotes is utterly depraved. A youth is being robbed of his entire future because of the terrible circumstances beyond his control that he endured in his childhood. And, oh well, we know that it’s the best place for him – it’s a kindness really. My God – this is nothing less than government sponsored child abuse! I wonder how much longer a society can last when it devours it’s own children? I seem to recall that it didn’t work out so well for Cronos.
This is nothing more than a modernized variant of slavery as most delinquents are black people – and they work in prisons that are owned by white people for corporations that are owned by white people…
It’s getting clearer and clearer what a shitty country you have there.
Yeah – land of the free, my ass…
When will the people actually get upset enough to end this?
Oh yes – before you ask: I’m an employee of a vasal state of the US so I’m not responsible for anything and have as many rights. You on the other hand…
The illegal importation of drugs has been extremely lucrative for:
1. Bankers and investment houses – billions of illegal dollars are knowingly washed through the major financial institutions of the world
2. Politicians – William Jefferson Clinton made his bones with the Reagan administration when he allowed Arkansas to be the central hub for incoming cocaine whose proceeds payed for the illegal war in Nicaragua.
3. Intelligence community (specifically the CIA) – Uses illegal drug proceeds to to provide “off the books” funding of various black projects
4. Prison industrial complex – drug crime is good for business
5. Pro-government advocates (liberal and conservative). A never ending war on drugs requires infrastructure and the management that goes with it.
6. political extremists in both parties who intentionally misappropriate tax dollars while blaming the victims of their own exploitve predation
The illegal importation of drugs has been extremely detrimental to:
1. the average working class Joe whose tax dollars never produce the results promised.
2. poor urban communities who were specifically targeted by the CIA as the end users in its war on the underclasses of America under Reagan. Their political marginalization was assured as their appetite for drugs grew.
3. all Americans as the illegal use of drugs has resulted in a plethora of intractable social ills
Among the many faults of our judicial system is the outright bizarre notion that a legal ruling in one state does not apply to another, and the failing that judges are not accountable for violating the guidance set down by higher courts. It applies to every aspect of the legal system, whether to the sentencing of juveniles, enforcement of environmental regulations, or corporate governance.
With regard to the last of the foregoing, Americans have ignored the lessons of the Panama Papers, allowing the continued existence of tax shelters in three states. This is because our elected officials are terrified about the states rights issues involved; in fact it might be unconstitutional to deny Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming the right to allow shell corporations. Meaning of course that our Constitution actually promotes tax fraud.
In a rational world, our system of government would have evolved in time toward a federal, parliamentary system such as enjoyed in countries like France and Germany, with constitutions crafted to recognize equal rights, environmental protection, and the like. But we cling to outmoded institutions, most under the delusion that our system is best of all. However, as we become ever more ignorant and intolerant as a nation, and ever more in the grip of corporate interests, we really have no choice but to stick with the Constitution as it is written, for to replace it now would likely bring something far worse.
i’m glad these minors are getting life without parole……they’ll end up killing innocent victims in the future anyway…………consider this as crime prevention
I find it very wrong that minors go to jail for life and criminalization as a business model in the U.S. Yet, I found this article in general too long, too rationalizing, too “persuasive”, a bit too repetitive and too Marxist.
Even though Taylor may not know that the whole (to them) “playful” situation would end in a homicide and driving “white kids” around for them to get high in the hood was a common practice, abduction is a very serious crime and he knew well his partner in crime had a gun and was “erratic”.
There is also the element of abuse seldom considered in U.S. courts (they tend to just look at the results of actions (gringos are very essentially abusive people, they see it as “natural”, “logical”)) Two kids (one of them visibly carrying a gun) attacked one totally unsuspecting 21 year old individual, take him for a ride, then killed him …
Also, as I always tell (my kinds of) kids is that “you know how something starts, but you never know how it ends”, so avoid b#llsh!t and cut the cr@p, find yourself something to do.
Here, as you did in the title, you are, it seems persuasively, conflating the legal terms “children” and “minors”. As a teacher I can tell you there are huge developmental differences among those age groups. I doubt legally speaking they mean the same thing, for example, when it comes to custody.
the other 40% being Latino?
True, but there are more pressing issues and ramifications when it comes to such crimes. Why are “our kids” overrepresented in U.S. prisons? Why do so many socially disenfranchised kids have to live like this? it is not just a matter of being a minor, black, Latino, in an unstable home, … there are more pressing wide spread societal issues and neglect going on.
Very true and sad.
That typical “U.S. Academia” kind of interpretation I find way too insular.
That should help Taylor a bit.
Taylor just played along? It seems for way longer that he intended!
There it goes, another “successful rapper” story. This is the same story you hear from almost all high school drop outs. All those stories are based on nothing more than protagonism, emotional fluff and Hollywoodesque illusions
They may as well. Taylor, my son, what you don’t seem to see still is that they don’t give an eff about us, so if you don’t care for yourself and yours, you are ultimately playing into their game.
At the end of the day Matthew Landry was abusively, “playfully” and unnecessarily killed by Robert “Fat Daddy” Taylor and Ihab Masalmani who are now telling stories while a mother, family lost their own.
RCL
> Yet, I found this article in general too long, too rationalizing, too “persuasive”, a bit too repetitive and too Marxist.
So in return you write an overly long response to convince people of your reactionist views?
1) overly long: because I included full quotes?
2) reactionist views: “reactionary” views, you mean? I wonder what is it you find reactionary
3) … to convince people: you should try to improve your mind reading skills before attempting to decipher people’s intent.
RCL
I think we are doing a lot better than some of our good, friendly countries like Saudi Arabia where they chop off the heads after the child gets to eighteen, just to make sure that they don’t overtake us with the total number of kids in prison, which makes us look real bad and articles like this can thus get written. After all we undertake to provide free accommodation and food to violent little black and muslim criminals for their whole miserable lives, which isn’t such a bad deal considering what else could happen to those small kids had they been in some other corner of the world from where they came. Sad but true ….
“…liberty and justice for all” is just a cynical sound bite.
We Americans have a propensity to conflate justice with vengeance, and given a choice often choose vengeance without mercy.
The true character of a society is revealed by the treatment of its prisoners.
The judges have investments in the prisons they are sending these kids too. Kinda like Obama shorted the coal market. Fraudulent bullshit stealing liberties daily.
This is very true.
That is a devastating article. If a 16-year-old goes to jail for life, even though life expectancy is dramatically reduced in jail, that’s easily expecting 50 years in jail – three-quarters of his life, in jail.
And of course, no attempt to rehabilitate, to help the criminal repay society or the victim’s family. No, the only way to pay is to suffer and suffer and suffer and suffer for half a century until they die, having cost the taxpayers tens of millions of dollars for no purpose at all.
We let our children not convicted of a crime be locked up in our vast US hell hole of a prison system. We let our youth be subject to a level of indentured servitude not seen since before the American Revolution due to predatory student loan debt. We have let our youth be subject to the lowest of wages, mere part time work or employment through temporary staffing agencies without benefits. We let our youth be subject to oppressive taxation from all levels of government and use their hard earned money to fund the basic services needed to sustain a nation while giving the filthy rich incomprehensible levels of corporate welfare and allow foreign tax havens for them to hide their stolen plunder. We allow our youth to be subject to unjust laws and the blocking of bills, which could protect them, because we allow the most corrupt form of government to exist due to our politicians and judges being able to be legally but amorally purchased.
And we call this society.
We the baby boom generation has by our apathy, ignorance, and worship of consumerism let this happen to our children. We the children of what many acknowledge as the “Greatest of Generations” will have both failed our children and our parents unless we wake up and take charge of our own destiny, rather than accept our children’s fate be left in the hands of the amoral.
Well said.
I was a “man” at 16. I was taught right from wrong my whole life. It gets down to parenting. Some of it is life experiences, but mostly parenting. There is NO excuse for ANY 12 year old to be out ALL night on any street.
Even so, at 12, without parents, YOU know what is right from wrong. You learn early on NOT to walk in the street as You will get run over by a car or truck. These so called kids use this for an excuse.
Godlessness and its consequences – across the board. All that is left is the futility of empty legalism that fixes nothing and restores nothing, just become another automated income stream.
This is the epitome of= in the ruling of the wicked rulers and their puppets perpetrating chaos out of (corrupt) order..– Alejandro Grace Ararat.
Most of these murderers should be put to death. They had no problem ruthlessly killing their victims, many of their victims were also young (not that that should matter). The article seems biased and the author not well informed. Research the actual stories and don’t listen to lying murderers tell their stories.
“The superpredator theory was debunked, but many of the harsh juvenile sentences remained in place.”
Exactly when was this theory debunked? It is as true today as it was in 1994, except we’ve added excuses and carve-outs to assauge our white-guilt. BLM is the crucible for the next wave of black/brown on black/brown crime. No more “stop and frisk” or “broken-window” policing. No, we now stay on the perimeter and attempt to keep the activity confined to only certain areas. Killing fields.
Every criminal deserves a chance at rehabilitation.
every persons deserves life support, habitat, health, education.
weapons other than rifles must be banned
maisie says: “Every criminal deserves a chance at rehabilitation”…
Well as long as YOU cover all the costs for the care, feeding, and security for the miscreants I’m for that…
So if the money was there, you’d agree? Well, thanks for admitting that.
Definite proof it’s the “land of the free.”
More American Exceptionalism on display.
If the child kills, they should be in jail.
The US is also the only country on the planet that actively and purposefully manufactures monsterism thru its practice of deprivation, competition, and racism, all of which are the methods and properties of an evil rothchild currency system which all persons are expected to subscribe to.
The rothchild currency system is the stage and we are merely the players.
Meanwhile the criminal banksters that perpetrate the operating environment rob america, finance war machines, steal homes, prop zionist genocide and dont go to prison for life without parole.
Good god.
This article doesn’t provide any proof that the superpredator theory was debunked. Harsher measures come in. Crime goes down in the age group specified. And somehow this is proof that the theory is wrong?
The system didn’t fail in this case — it worked exactly as intended. The problem is simply the sheer incomprehensible idiocy of the felony murder rule, or law of parties or whatever the lawyers call the trick. They decided for some reason it makes absolutely no difference whether you’re the person who pulled the trigger or not. What use that is I don’t know, unless you suppose the people who made the law were in on it with the organized criminals to start with, since only the dumbest schmuck would want to talk, knowing that he is incriminating not only the killer but himself.
Oh yeah, sure, I know, proving which person pulled the trigger is too much of a pain in the ass. But even if they believed that, why couldn’t their rule strike an average? If two people are in a plot, and one decides to kill someone, but you can’t prove which, then you average their sentences – and the one who didn’t do it has a good reason to rack his brains for a way to prove the other guy was the one. It would be a shitty compromise, but still better than this.
“Richard John Wershe Jr. is a political prisoner in America. The political component of his ordeal is local, it’s harsh and it’s vindictive.
Wershe, who grew up in Detroit, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for a non-violent drug crime committed when he was 17. The law was eventually changed to allow parole but that hasn’t made a difference for Wershe. He is Michigan’s last remaining juvenile non-violent drug offender, still behind bars after 27 years. Wershe, who has been described by a prison official as a near-model prisoner, was never charged with any drug-related violence, he was never charged with ordering any drug violence, he never operated crack houses, he was never charged with conspiracy because he never had a gang, he was never named as an unindicted co-conspirator in any narcotics case and he was never called as a witness in any drug trials. Yet, he’s been labeled a drug lord and kingpin.” – http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/29/is-cocaine-legend-white-boy-rick-serving-life-for-busting-crooked-cops.html
Richard Wershe Jr. is 28 years into a life sentence for a non-violent drug offense which occurred when he was a minor (17 years old). Rick was arrested for doing what a drug task force had previously encouraged and paid him to do starting when he was just 14 years old. Why should Rick have to spend another day behind bars for the mistakes he made as a kid??
“In May 1987, when he was 17, Wershe was charged with possession with intent to deliver eight kilos of cocaine, which police had found stashed near his house following a traffic stop. He had the misfortune of being convicted and sentenced under one of the harshest drug statutes ever conceived in the United States, Michigan’s so-called 650 Lifer law, a 1978 act that mandated an automatic prison term of life without parole for the possession of 650 grams or more of cocaine. (The average time served for murder in state prisons in the 1980s was less than 10 years.)
Sentencing juvenile offenders to life without parole for non-homicide crimes was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010, by which point such sentences were already exceedingly rare; the court was able to locate only 129 inmates serving them nationwide. Michigan eventually acknowledged the failures of the 650 Lifer statute—the governor who signed it into law, William G. Milliken, has called it the greatest mistake of his career—and rolled it back in 1998. Those already serving time became parole eligible and began to be released. Wershe is the only person sentenced under the old law who is still in prison for a crime committed as a juvenile. Prominent and violent kingpins and enforcers from Wershe’s day in Detroit have long since been freed. And yet Wershe has remained incarcerated, for more than 27 years.” – From ‘The Trials of White Boy Rick’ by Evan Hughes. – http://i64.tinypic.com/121aelk.jpg